[Marxism] MiddleEastReport

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

WORLD SHAKES AND FEARS
AS BUSH FIREWORKS & PRAYERS  ERUPT
SYRIA + IRAN now targeted by Israel and  U.S.


White House Fireworks the night before the  Inaugural, 19 Jan 2005

"The view one now tends to hear in Washington is  that there
can be no victory in Iraq until  Iran and Syria are brought to heel...
Douglas Feith, assistant  secretary of defense for policy at the
Pentagon, is said to be working  closely with Israeli officers in
identifying weapons sites for  targeting in Iran, much as he
did in planning the war against  Iraq."


Inauguration Day in  Washington - 20 Jan 2005


_MIDDLEEAST.ORG_ (http://www.middleeast.org/)  - MER - Washington - 23
January:     Rarely making  it even mildly onto important TV programs or the 
pages
of the U.S. corporate  media, many in the American intellectual class
privately now talk among  themselves (or it is whisper) that their country now 
borders
on being a  neo-fascist crusading police-state.    The terminology used
privately even in Washington circles is now far more harsh and bold than  
anything
in memory, and the situation itself far more flag-waving and
ultra-nationalist than even during the early McCarthy Days of the Cold War when 
 the
technological capabilities of the State for repression and deception were  far 
more
limited than they are today.    President Bush was as usual  early to bed even
on Inauguration Day as the bands played on at Balls throughout  the city.  But
the next morning he began his second term with a Prayer  Service at the
Washington National Cathedral at which no less than Billy Graham  proclaimed him
Chosen by God and symbolically launched the next phase in the new  American
crusade to remake the world in it's own Christian-Judeo  image.   Oh yes...the
Muslim clergyman who was suppose to attend and  speak at the prayer service was
not able to make it due to  'illness'.



Front Page, The Washington  Times, 22 January 2005


____________________________________


Syria, Iran, everyone is in  Bush's crosshairs


By Patrick Seale


01/22/05 "Daily Star", Beirut --In recent days  Washington has been awash
with speculation that the United States is preparing  armed action against Iran
or Syria, or possibly both. It is not clear, however,  whether the reports,
leaks and threats point to preparations for an imminent  attack or are merely
part of an elaborate campaign of psychological warfare  aimed at isolating the
Iraqi battlefield from Iraq's neighbors.

According  to a source at the U.S. National War College, an American strike
against Syria  nearly took place a month ago, but was put on hold because of
objections from  the U.S. Army. Any future attack could take the form of an air
and naval  bombardment, rather than a ground invasion. Syria is accused of
infiltrating  money, weapons and recruits to the insurgency in western and
northern Iraq, and  of giving support to anti-Israeli guerrilla groups like
Hizbullah and Hamas;  while Iran is in America's gun-sights because of what is
described as its  "large-scale interference" in Iraq.

Iran is also being targeted  because American and Israeli planners have no
faith in efforts by the  Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, and by
Britain, France and  Germany, to persuade Iran to give up its alleged nuclear
weapons program.  Israeli spokesman, including Foreign Minister Silvan
Shalom, have said that  Israel would not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran.

Another explanation for  the recent bout of war fever is that we are
witnessing a replay of a familiar  Washington game, whereby rival government 
agencies
are competing for U.S.  President George W. Bush's ear. By talking up the need
to make war on Iran and  Syria, neoconservatives inside and outside the
administration seem anxious to  pre-empt any change of course by the new 
secretary
of state, Condoleezza  Rice.

At her confirmation hearing last week before the Senate  Foreign Relations
Committee, Rice echoed the standard rhetoric of Bush's first  term: "America and
the free world," she declared, "are once again engaged in a  long-term
struggle against an ideology of hatred and tyranny and terror and  
hopelessness. And
we must confront these challenges ..." This will go some way  in reassuring
the pro-Israeli, anti-Muslim neocons.

But they will  be less pleased with her repeated assertion that "the time for
diplomacy is  now." She pledged to involve herself personally in the
Arab-Israeli peace  process, which neocons see as a threat to put pressure on 
Israel
to yield  territory. She is also reported to have urged Bush to build bridges
to European  leaders during his forthcoming visit to Brussels and Berlin next
month. This  again will arouse neocon anxiety.

The belligerent neocons who  pressed for war against Iraq are in still in
place, notably in Donald Rumsfeld's  Department of Defense and in Vice-President
Dick Cheney's office. In spite of  their responsibility for the mess in Iraq,
they have not lost their jobs.  Washington's influential right-wing think
tanks have also been waging a  vociferous propaganda campaign against Iran and
Syria and have been urging the  Bush administration to strike at both countries.
In a report from Washington  this week, Britain's Financial Times said that
the neocons were backing an  Iranian opposition group, the Alliance for
Democracy in Iran, which is hoping  for a big injection of American funds. 
Several
senators have also urged the  administration to back "regime change" in Iran.

Until now, most observers  believed that the U.S. was too busy and
overstretched in Iraq to contemplate new  wars. But this argument is being 
turned on its
head. The view one now tends to  hear in Washington is that there can be no
victory in Iraq until Iran and Syria  are brought to heel.

No one outside a small circle in Tehran knows  whether Iran has taken a
decision to acquire atomic weapons or whether it simply  wants to acquire the
technology in order to have the option of making such  weapons at a future 
date. It
seems determined to master the uranium fuel cycle  for the purposes of power
generation, but denies that it intends to build a  bomb. Its policy has all
the ambiguity and opacity that Israel deployed when it,  too, was developing its
nuclear arsenal in the late 1950s and  1960s.

Meanwhile, Iran seems to be preparing for tough negotiations with  the
Europeans over the coming months in which the prize is a big package of  trade 
and
financial benefits in exchange for putting its nuclear program on ice  - at
least for the time being.

Iran is also looking to its defenses. Some  observers believe it is preparing
the Revolutionary Guard corps, the Pasdaran,  for asymmetric warfare in the
event of an American attack, as well as its vast  corps of Islamic volunteers,
known as the Bassij, several million strong. In  December, Iran carried out a
military exercise close to the Iraqi frontier  mobilizing up to 120,000 men.
It was billed as the largest since the 1979  revolution.

No one supposes that the Iranian armed forces, with  their antiquated
equipment, would be much of a match for the U.S. in a  conventional war. But 
any U.S.
strike against Iran, or Syria for that matter,  would be likely to unleash
guerrilla and resistance forces that could put  American and Israeli citizens
and interests around the world gravely at risk.  Douglas Feith, assistant
secretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon, is  said to be working closely 
with
Israeli officers in identifying weapons sites  for targeting in Iran, much as
he did in planning the war against Iraq. Israel  has also sought U.S. support
in pressuring Russia not to agree to sell advanced  missiles to Syria.

In this month's The New Yorker magazine, the  celebrated investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh reported: "The Administration  has been conducting 
secret
reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since  last summer. Much of the
focus is on the accumulation of intelligence on Iranian  nuclear, chemical and
missile sites ... The goal is to identify and isolate  three dozen, and perhaps
more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision  strikes and
short-term commando raids."

The Pentagon has dismissed  Hersh's report as unfounded, but what seems
beyond doubt is that the Pentagon  has won its battle with the CIA over control 
of
clandestine intelligence  operations. Washington sources confirm that the CIA
has been "gutted," while the  Pentagon remains in control of much of America's
vast $40 billion a year  intelligence budget.

Judging from Bush's own remarks, he is clearly  not planning a speedy
withdrawal from Iraq following the Jan. 30 elections, as  several American 
pundits
have been urging. He has said that his own election  victory last November was a
vote of confidence in his Iraq war. In outlining his  plans for the next four
years, he continues to resort to slogans like the need  to pursue the "global
war on terror" and "build democracy" in the Middle East.  These generalities
may be dismissed as simplistic, except that they conceal a  hard-nosed agenda,
which includes defeating the worldwide movement of Islamic  militancy in
order to protect the U.S. from another Sept. 11, 2001, and ensuring  long-term
U.S. dominion over Arab oil.

Israel and its American friends in  the Bush administration add two further
goals: securing Israel's monopoly of  weapons of mass destruction; and
depriving the Palestinians of any external  support, whether from Syria or from
militant groups like Lebanon's Hizbullah, so  as to force them to accept 
whatever
crumbs Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon  might throw them.

The strategic doctrine behind these goals is that  the U.S. must retain
global military supremacy and Israel regional military  supremacy. Their enemies
must be denied any sort of deterrent capability and  must give up any hope of
achieving a balance of power. While the wisdom of this  doctrine might be
doubted, the future does not look  reassuring.

*  Patrick Seale, a veteran Middle East analyst, wrote this commentary for
The  Daily Star
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